There is no mention of "self-defense" in the 2nd amendment.It is implied that the right to bear arms is necessary for the security of the nation. But nothing mentioned or implied about the security of the individual, let alone self-defense.It is also implied that those who have guns be disciplined "A well regulated Militia".

I see no reason why preventing a firearm from firing unless its near the owners watch is detrimental. It is little more than a safety lock located on the owner rather than on the gun.

At the very least, it should be a choice a buyer can make when buying a gun. I know if i had both children and guns in my home, i'd like the idea of that safety lock.

No, that means that 2/3rds of the people didn't vote. If they didn't vote they had no say in the result and no right to complain that it didn't wind up they way they wanted.

That is such a horrible view, made by an idealist rather than a realist.When both choices are unacceptable, the only logical choice is to not vote.Voting in someone you don't want in power, is explicitly giving your endorsement.

And "no right to complain".Everyone has a right to complain and free speach, thats one of the best ways to get thing improved. Enforcing censorship against those who are dissatisfied with the elections is tyranny.

Ultimately the best thing for a democracy is a politically active and informed population.A "Put up or shut up" attitude to poorly run elections is just immature and counter productive to a healthy democracy.

The assets are being sold from the NZ government, to mostly the NZ population. The money made is being used to keep debt repayment insurance low, and help pay for new health infrastructure like hospitals.

Mr Key was born in a state owned house, with a single parent. He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but hes made it to be the prime minster of our country.

I believe its a wise choice for leader, that we pick someone who (despite the poor start in life,) manages to be successful in life. Electing someone who can't run their own business, to the largest business in the country, The Country itself, is a recipe for disaster (*cough*Bush*cough*)

In the 2+ terms his party been running the country, he has managed to bring our country from the brink of a debt that could never be repaid, into surplus, while dealing with a earthquakes that obliterated our 3rd Largest city, Christchurch.It hasn't been easy, as hes cut all new funding resulting in a lot of job losses, but the results are speaking for themselves. We are now in surplus with one of the best outlooks on the future in all the oecd

If the opposition had their way, we'd be worse than australia, who despite having a booming mining sector, are predicting record deficits because they only know how to spend money.

NZ authorities have not destroyed a company.The running operations were halted by US enforcement on US soil.

All NZ was involved with, was arresting Kim Docom, and freezing his personal NZ assets.Even if our police force told the US to sod off, the US would still have seized the servers, and his company bank accounts, and the company would of faced all the problems that have halted its business. The only difference is that Dotcom would be free to travel and make business arrangements as he saw fit, with his personal finances located in NZ

Fact of the matter is that a console, or the odd perk for that matter doesn't make them free men. And in return for such access to perks, we can demand and expect good behaviour or other such tokens in return.

A prison exists to :protect the people outside from the people insidecreate a deterrent to crime by creating a visible punishmentrehabilitate the criminals so they will be less likely/willing to commit future acts of crime.

If access to an entertainment device helps better rehabilitate the inmates, then its worth looking into. Creating a prison that's so badarse that only the strongest survive, isn't going to provide any useful social skills or conditioning... Unless you're trying to create sardaukar troops.

I've liked, and still like Google, because they have a high sense of business ethic.

Did Microsoft or yahoo pull out of china when it was getting hacked?Did Microsoft or yahoo contest china's censorship programs?Does Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple make exporting data/contacts you create on their platforms exportable should you wish to migrate away?Does Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple offer free api's, allowing 3rd parties to access and interface with their services and user's data?Does Apple operate a store which is free to publish on?Does Apple have a phone that is unlocked, easy to perform maintenance and connect to, and doesn't attempt to brick jailbroken phones each time a firmware update arrives?How about how Google tries to protect the freedom of the internet, adding its weight to net neutrality, patent reform, and other legal issues that plague the future of IT.

"What happened to the Google that just had a cool search engine? Why is it taking advantage of search monopoly profits to either buy out or crush every competitor in every non-core market? Why do they talk about openness when their core business is based on a search and advertising engine that is not open source?"

Google grew, advertising is its key business and like all businesses it does what it can to protect its review stream. But its doing it in the most honest way a business can, buying out or just beating via prices.Its not sending lawsuits with patent infringement shakedowns like every other big company out there.

As for openness, there is no reason, legal, ethical, or moral, that google should reveal their search engine source code. In fact the only thing that would do is improve search functionality of their competitors, and help link farms be more effective.

In summary.Google is a saint compared to every other mainstream IT company out there.It’s not perfect, but they actively try to be good AND profitable. It’s not an easy line to walk.They wouldn’t be around long if they were as perfect as Op wants (supporting the competition, never buying in small companies, opening all software/engines to the public/competitors)... In that case they'd be the good and forgotten.

For it to read an uncompressed file, it simply needs to seek it on disk and read.For it to read a compressed file, it needs to seek the compressed file, open the libaries needed to deal with the compression logarithm if not cashed, read to the index of the archive, read headers to find the desired file, seek to that location, read, decompress.

For any small document, the number of seek operations on a standard HD is goign to be the limiting factor far more then the bandwidth of a hard-drive. And compression has probably doubled that limiting factor.

Most Hard-drives can match SSD in bandwidth, its just that the biggest advantage of a SSD is that there really isn't a seek time, so finding then accessing the file is near instant in comparasion.

About the only way compression improves performance is when the actual bandwidth is botlenecked, but thats really not the case with documents, its just the seek delay accessing the file.

1. The price of meat is more expensive in Japan then most countries. So saying they'll get the costs down that of japanese meat isn't really a draw card for most other western/american nations.

2. Compleating the food cycle? I thought we got mad-cow disease because we did this very thing with cows. We reduced the food chain and had cows eating cows, Rather then having intermedate agents inbetween.

I don't know if thats a troll, but i guess someone needs to correct it.

Its free as in free speach.

You can still sell gpl software, with a gpl licence. So no, its not always free as in beer.

It's normally free however, because theres nothing stopping someone buying 1 copy, and then undercutting or giving it away for free. So selling it for money under the gpl isn't a practical business plan.

The owners of the software can do with it what they like, how they like. That's free as in speach.

So explain to me how a goverment bank, lending money to a goverment entitiy, is saving money.

Sure the goverment overall might make large savings in low interest repayments. But at the same time, the goverment bank with its billion dollars is getting a terrible rate of return on its investment.

So lower expenses with lower income, or normal expenses with normal income.Out the left pocket and into the right, it makes little differance.

Or is there something i'm missing, like the bank can print its own money?

"Once you emit any electromagnetic radiation outside the bounds of your property, you have no expectation of privacy whatsoever."

What a load of shite.I believe the US Supreme court decided in a 4-3 decision that there are expectations of privacy, and just because you can observe/listen in a public place doesn't give you a right to do so. (I can't find the case, i believe it was over cops using powerful heat cameras to find and raid weed growing operation houses).

And damned right!.As it is there are technologies that allow a laser be pointed at a window and you can hear the audio with clarity on the other side.There are cameras that have limited vision through solid walls. And even your own body leaves behind elements in public places that can be anazlised for private infomation. And that was from what i remember from nearly a decade ago.

Just wait for the portable back scatter machines to be developed, then people will be able to take nude snaps of you if you leave your house...

Now although this might be a breach of privacy, the fault is on the "victims" because they were transmitting infomation, there was no attempt to keep it private, (the hardware goign out of its way to make it public) so i don't believe google are at fault.